LoAmi

:: looks around ::

Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched?  :D

Welcome to STSF!

Of course, look at all the resources people have mentioned above, and ask just about anyone and they'll tell you just how great STSF simming is. :-)

As for how much time, as you can see, it makes a difference as to how involved you are/want to become.  As for me, I'm on one advanced sim that commits me to 1 hr of sim time per week.  I spend about 1/2 hr a week writing a log for it.  I usually play in 1-3 academies per week, depending on how much real-life free time I have.  And, I hang around the STSF boards quite a bit posting and answering questions (like this one) during other free time.  The time is worth it, otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it!

After * sends a private message titled $ to #, the messenger gives an acknowledgement:

Thanks *, your message $ has been sent to #. They will now be informed that they have a new message.

Wouldn't "he will now be informed that he has a new message" be correct, because "they" is plural?  (And, yes, "he" is the neutral/undefined gender in this case!)

Yes, this was a great academy... quite a lot of fun...

:: thwaps Garnoopy ::

Here's one for the record books:

5 GM's in the room, and the only one who died was Dac.

Ewps... this is what happens when you never actually look at the boards and keep pressing the "new posts" button.

What does the animated icon next to the last post name on the FAQs posts mean?

Here's one I've seen a couple of times:

"How do I change my startrek.com chat name?"

There is no way to change or remove a startrek.com chat name.  However, many of us would like to change it, especially when promoted.  To effectively change your name:

1. Log in to startrek.com under your old name

2. Click on the "My account" link at the top of the page.

3. Change the email address to a dummy address and hit the "Update" button at the bottom of the screen.  

ASIDE about addresses: The address you enter here may be a real email address or it may not be!  If you never want to log in on your old name again, you can just enter something like [email protected] and it will work.  If you do want to use it again, enter a dummy address (still doesn't have to be real!) that you'll remember.  

For example, if you wanted to change from ens_foo to lt_foo and your real email was [email protected], you could change the address for the ens_foo account to [email protected] (something easy to remember) and log in under your old name again.

4. Register for a new name under your regular email address.

Addition to "How do I join STSF?"

In order to join the chat rooms, you have to obtain a startrek.com chat name that may be different from your STSF message boards name.  To obtain a startrek.com name, go to http://www.startrek.com/community/chat.asp and press "Register now" at the top of the screen, then follow the instructions.  In order to identify your rank, cadets are requested but not required to begin their chat names with cdt_ or cadet_ as in: cdt_foo

Addition for right after "where do games take place?"  "What are the system requirments?"

The chat rooms work under Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, and probably any other web browser, under any system.  Java Virtual Machine software is required and may be obtained from http://java.sun.com .  If you have popup blocking software installed, and the chat room links do not work, you may have to exclude www.startrek.com from the block in order to use the chatrooms.  For details on specific software, see your software's help.

that even if they were as in-synch as the Borg collective, they really couldn't do a whole heck of a lot.

I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing.  The UN (with the exception of the Security Council, where the five main victors of WWII have vetoes) is essentially a democratic body that includes a lot of undemocratic countries.  And, part of their obligations are... to promote worldwide democracy!?!?  Could you imagine what would happen if Libya really had some power to enforce its idea of human rights?

On the title page for this stsf website (look up and click "home") there is a gigundo paragraph called "Getting Started" which includes a link called "getting started" that has many of those very questions answered.  :)

I'm well aware of that - the getting started section is a great place to learn the basics of simming; however, if it were that obvious, we wouldn't keep getting the same posts on the boards.  Also, it doesn't have very specific instructions telling people where to go.  Something in a FAQ format (with lots of more conspicuous links to it) that actually had both direct links to the other resources and instructions on how to get to them without going through the FAQ page might be helpful.

There seem to be quite a few questions that keep coming up on the boards.  

Some of them are:

How do I get started?

What's the difference between an academy and an advanced sim?

How do I join an academy?

When are the academies?

Where are the academies?

What do I do in order to graduate?

How long does it take to graduate?

What do I do once I've graduated?

Maybe we should put up a FAQ list, both on the boards (pinned? its own topic?)  and on the STSF main page.  Most of the questions are answered in one sentence or less, or simply by a direct link that specifically shows where to go and/or directions how to get there.  New people seem to have a lot of trouble figuring out where our chat rooms are.  Some of the questions are more in the realm of "advice" from other players/GMs.

I'm sure there are more of them, but I haven't gone through the boards to find them.

Ohhh well, our millitary is a bunch of weaklings. No, no, we dont have a millitary, or a noticiable one atleast.

Don't have a military?  What could you possibly mean?  A few years ago, after a huge ice storm crippled Eastern Canada (near the US border, where the people live), Canadian soldiers were hard at work picking ice and shoveling snow!

If you could answer those questions honestly and get "Admiral," you have way too much free time on your hands.

Fred pegged it.. Bush inherited this, don't blame him for delay. Clinton didn't finish it (can't PO the UN) the UN let Saddam keep violating, and all Bush has done is try to keep the UN happy yet finish this mess.

 

I like the second cartoon!!!

That's a bit unfair to Clinton - he had very little in the way of reasons for war and America was already fighting in the former Yugoslavia under NATO.  Bush Sr. is the one who should have finished off Saddam in '91: he had the opportunity and the motive.

=/\= Personal Log of Lt.(jg) Arphazad Lo'Ami =/\=

::Begin Recording::

Personal Log, Stardate 10303.18; Ever since I arrived back on the Arcadia, my memory of the events of the last few days... or weeks... has been fading.  There are, however, two noticeable differences.  The first is that my recurrent back pain and flashes of memory are gone.  I only recall having the worst attack while on some foreign ship.  Then, it was gone.  Given time, I will check this out at sickbay, just to make sure there is nothing still wrong.  

The other obvious difference is the hole left in the science department by the death of Crewman Kawalas.  I was her acting commanding officer in the science department on the away mission - a mission on which I was responsible for bringing her along.  How do I write a final log entry in her file?  How do I apply meaning to a death that was entirely without purpose?  The captain, and, to a lesser extent Cmdr. Alces must deal with situations like these on an unfortunately more-or-less regular basis.  Perhaps asking their advice is in order.  

We have left the Vogarts, presumably as friends, given theit gift of a dilithium crystal.  While my tricorder data is as full of holes as my own memory, some day, when we're ready - and after much more considered thought and controlled experiment - we will be able to reconstruct it and retry the hypertachyon drive.  I, and the science department, refuse to be caught by another hidden asymmetry again!

=/\= End Recording =/\=

Welcome to STSF!

All the advice that's been given above pretty much covers it.  As Ensign Smith said, the best way to start out is to read the basics in the help/getting started section (there's a link to it from the www.stsf.net main page), find an academy by the schedule (there's a link to that right under the STSF logo at the top of this page) and then jump into the academy (at the appropriate time, hit the "Chat Rooms" button on this page and click on "Chat Lobby," then find the link to the "Holodeck").  If you have any questions once you get there, you can PM (private message) the GM's (game masters), or pretty much any other player...

If you have any other before-game startup questions, just post on these boards, and you'll probably get an answer pretty quickly.  Also, you can check out previous posts in the "Questions and Comments" and "STSF Academy" boards.

Simming is a lot of fun, and STSF is a great community (word carefully chosen!) to do it in!

but to get the alcohol I hand out, you have to be a Lt. Cmdr.

::elbows A9:: He really thinks that's alcohol...

Oh it probably is *an* alcohol.

:: pictures Garnoopy taking a swig of a pentathol tequila ::

... wonder what he's gonna say next...

:: throws confetti and tosses a bottle of tequila to ziggy and dac ::

and what am I... chopped liver?

I'll take a smooth, single-malt scotch...

This isn't exactly a *death*, but it was my favorite ACTION of all time.  The scene went something like this: I was a CSEC on an academy ship, and there wasn't much need for security.  I started out in the security office and played a modified version of a Monty Python routine with a few NPC ASECs.  After I got bored with that, and *still* no call for security anywhere on the ship, I decided to eat lunch.  I replicated a burger, and put on ketchup and then started eating.

Then, as the first time I was not ignored during the sim (despite the whole other storyline going on in my office), I got an ACTION from FredM that went something like this:

Lo'Ami falls to the floor in convulsions.  What he had thought was ketchup was really engineering sealant.

I'm still using the last few squeezes of FredM's "ketchup" to douse graduating ensigns.

PS - To new players: Following this pattern of play is not a good way to graduate.  In order to graduate, you should interact with the rest of the real people, even if it just means sitting on the bridge and mouthing off a few comments/suggestions.

Lt. Arphazad Lo'Ami was puzzled.  As a scientist, he was puzzled by what was going on around him.  The void, the yacht, Kawalas' death, the planet, the old woman, the Prophets.  The crew reunited, standing together on the same planet Ziggy and himself had crashed on a few hours... or hundred years ... ago.  All of the elements of his recent life ran through his mind; or, at least half of his mind.

As an individual, he was puzzled by what was happening inside him.  It was an odd feeling of detachment.

"All right then, if we've mastered this place, then all we need to do is think of the ship, and we'll all go home," Captain Moose suggested.  Apparently, the crew was using thought as transportation?  With no time to ask, Lo'Ami simply accepted that this might work.  He had begun to develop a trust for the Arcadia crew, and, empirically, they *were* there.

Telano replied: "Why don't we think of the ship and somewhere more specific? Home is a bit to subjective..."

Then Dac: "Captain, first the Bridge, and then I suggest ... Earth?... or Risa?"

And the discussion ended, with Captain Moose giving an implied order, in his nonchalant command style: "It works for me."

And, so, presumably, the entire crew was thinking of the bridge.

Arphazad thought of the bridge as well.  He thought about how good it would be to be back at his science station.  He tried to avoid the thought of his impending duty to make a final entry in Kawalas' file.  In parallel, Lo'Ami thought first about the bridge, then about the Vogarts, another host's long-past childhood... two trains of thought!  Something was definitely wrong internally.

And... something was definitely wrong externally as well.  Arphazad Lo'Ami found himself staring at a console.  The diagrams on it indicated that it was likely a science station - a counterpart to his own.  But, it was not his own.  Looking around, Lo'Ami realized that he was alone, in an unknown place.  The console in front of him displayed mostly familiar data in an unreadable language: readouts on local gravitation, EM fields, particle fields, lifesigns, spectroscopic analyses, etc.  The console to the left of it displayed schematics of a ship.  He recognized it immediately as Vogart.  The console to the right displayed schematics of another ship: Arcadia.  The consoles all lacked buttons, so he did not know how to interface with them, or even if he should be trying to interface with them.  The second, uncontrolled train of thought that continued to race through his mind was not helping his decision making.

After a few seconds of indecisive staring, the consoles began to glow in a blinking green, and a thumping noise was broadcast throughout the ship.  Now, both of Arphazad Lo'Ami's minds came to the same conclusion: they were piled high and deep in excrement.

Hello and welcome to STSF.  

Most of the information you need to get started is, conveniently, in the "Getting started" section (you can get to it via the main stsf.net page) and the schedule (you can just click the "schedule" button right below the "Star Trek Simulation Forum" logo on top of the screen).  Graduation from the academy takes a variable amount of time.  Although the minimum is 3 academy sims, few people get promoted after that short of a time.  A few ways to hasten graduation: (1) follow all the instructions from the GMs (game masters) (2) Show up regularly at academies run by the same GMs - they'll get to know you faster.

Have fun!

Happy Birthday Marsovac

You still need someone to make those decisions, though.  And in some ways, by automating it to that extent, you've increased the boredom factor, because now you have extensive periods of time with nothing to do, rather than have a task to focus your attention.

Actually, no: (1) the chance of procedural error is reduced (2) the only step with human involvement is the decision - the part that requires some intelligence (well, truth be told, it would've just required a much more complicated program that the macro language couldn't handle), so the computer couldn't do it (3) since the computer could do O(100) operations much faster than a human, the downtime and boredom time was reduced, because the only thing taking up time was the decision (and recording results).  This is not true for all cases of automation, but, ST computers seem to be able to understand natural language pretty well - including the context of the language - they could probably get around doing menial tasks a lot better than today's computers, and certainly a lot better than the particular lab software I happened to be using.  

Another possibility: developing the ability to do a job takes time and practice.  Maybe employment in the Federation works more like an apprenticeship system, where people who want to get in to a business (and succeed at it) take on the smaller, more menial roles, with the goal of advancing to the next highest position.

Good point and I was thinking about that while I was writing it.  Basically, the only answer I could come up with was: if a computer could practically run a starship, it can't do the menial labor involved in making menial labor easier?

It sort of reminds me of some lab work I did.  First, I set up this elaborate data analysis system that must have required 100 or so not-so-obvious keypresses to get it to work right.  Then, after two weeks, I had programmed some macros reducing the number of keypresses to 4 (the numbers 1,2,3 and 4) and only requiring keypresses when a decision had to be made.  In other words, I had converted complicated (but annoying) labor into work a monkey could (almost) do.  Maybe menial tasks work like that in 24th century: find someone to figure out how to get it automated, and after that, it's his business to support it.